Category: Conor Cusack

The Irish media health care awards is a prestigious event held in Ireland and sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline. While it is important to honor good health care reporting, particularly in the area of mental health, surely it’s ironic that GlaxoSmithKline are sponsoring it? Glaxo have had more bad press than I’ve had hot dinners, and most of it is covered on this blog, (which will be 8 years old in January). A lot of their bad press has occurred because they made, marketed and sold an anti-depressant called Seroxat/Paxil which has damaged, maimed and killed tens of thousands worldwide.

Conor Cusack is a great advocate for mental health sufferers in Ireland, and he has been doing great work trying to bring awareness to the plight of depression sufferers for a few years now, and I admire him greatly.

Conor recently gave a talk at the Irish media health care awards (sponsored by GSK), and I wonder if Conor was aware that GSK were caught lying about the safety of their anti-depressant Seroxat for children, would he have given the talk? I have a lot of respect for Conor, and I am sure he would not have given this talk if he was informed about GSK’s history of damaging patients, particularly sufferers of mental illness. I have written about Conor’s campaigning in previous posts, and I was particulalry impressed by his views on psychiatry. I am a champion of his views.

Therefore, I would like to make it clear that this blog post is not a criticism of Conor. It is a criticism of the drug company GSK, who sponsored Conor’s talk at the media awards. I have great respect and admiration for Conor Cusack, in fact I think we would have a lot in common.

I am writing this because I wonder is Conor aware that GSK were fined 3 Billion by the US department of Justice for over a decade of corruption, unethical marketing practices, off-label prescribing, and fraud a few years ago, the full extent of which can be read on the Dept of Justice legal complaint. It makes for shocking and sobering reading. If you’re reading Conor, please read the links I am providing you.

Share this:

Like this:

Some of my Irish readers might be familiar with the Irish hurling player, Conor Cusack? Conor made headlines in Ireland when he wrote about his depression and his experiences with psychiatry and psychiatric drugs in Ireland. Last Friday, Conor was interviewed on the Late Late Show, Conor was asked on the show, was he medicated as a result of his depression diagnosis?. He responded, “I went into the psychiatric system”… “I always just got the feeling with psychiatrists, they weren’t interested with my story, they were interested with my symptoms”… at which point, the presenter, Ryan Turbridy, quickly interrupted and stated, ” Psychiatry works for an awful lot of people, it doesn’t work for others”. Conor always felt that the pills weren’t working for him (at one point he was on 17 pills a day).

His last hope resulted in a consultation for ECT, at which Conor felt that this was definitely not the option for him. Deeply disappointed , he considered suicide, but luckily he eventually met a good psychologist who then brought him on the road to recovery.

Conor’s story would be familiar to anyone who has been cast upon the psychiatric merry-go round. In Conor’s case, his psychiatric misadventure lasted over ten years. After many diagnoses,psychiatric consultations, anxiety attacks, depressions, suicidal despair, pills, and belly aches, Conor abandoned psychiatry, got some therapy and eventually got on the road to recovery. Notice, how, like many people, he recovered after he exhausted the psychiatric route…

It seems that the psychiatric system does nothing but perpetuate the mental and emotional suffering for most people. The drugs do no good, particularly long term. For me, like for Conor, they made me 100 times worse. Psychiatrists make a very good living controlling this system of human suffering with diagnoses and drug regimes, but do they heal people? or make them worse?

Suicide is an epidemic in Ireland, how many of those suicides were under the care of psychiatry? How many were drug induced? How many people does psychiatry work for? Or more importantly, has psychiatry ever ‘worked’ for anybody?

Personally, I think that psychiatry kills, it is an extremely dangerous system to become ensnared in, and I think Conor was lucky that he escaped its sociopathic clutches..

(I’d also like to ask why Ryan Turbridy felt the need to interject and claim that psychiatry works for many people. This is a dubious claim and it seems to me that the national broadcaster still fears offending many of Ireland’s oppressive institutions- in preference to- the exposure of truth.)

This is a great interview which highlights the disgraceful approach of psychiatry when it comes to the treatment of depression. (more on this later).

Here is an excerpt from Conor’s blog-post which has gone viral in Ireland.

The full post is below.

______________________________

“…In here in my room was a living hell. I was now on about 18 tablets a day and not getting better but worse. I was eating very little but the medication was ballooning my weight to nearly twenty stone. I was sent to see another psychiatrist and another doctor who suggested electric shock therapy which I flatly refused. It was obvious to me I was never going to get better. My desire for death was now much stronger than my desire for living so I made a decision…”

I still remember the moment well. It was a wet, cold, grey Friday morning. I rose out of bed having had no sleep the night before. Panic attacks are horrific experiences by day, by night they are even worse.

As I drove to work on my trusted Honda 50, a group of my friends passed in their car heading to college. They all smiled and waved and looked so happy. I smiled and waved and acted happy.

I had loved and excelled in school but it was the same with my hurling, it was the same with my friends, it was the same with my family, it was the same with the people of Cloyne, it was the same with life, I had lost interest in all of them. Losing interest in people was the worst.

SEE ALSO

Where once I would have felt sadness at seeing my friends heading to where I had always wanted to go, I now didn’t. Something much larger, deeper, darker had taken hold of my mind and sadness, despair, hopelessness were not strong enough to survive alongside what I was feeling.

They say something has to crack to allow the light in. At about 11am that morning, I finally cracked. I couldn’t do it anymore, all my strength at keeping up my pretence had gone. I curled up in the corner of the building and began to cry. One of the lads working with me came over and he didn’t know what to do. I asked him to take me home.

The GP called to my house and prescribed some sleeping pills and arranged for me to be sent to the hospital for some tests.

I spent a week there and they done every test imaginable. Physically, I was in perfect health. I was diagnosed with suffering from ‘Depression’ or in laymans terms, that awful phrase ‘of suffering with his nerves’. I had never heard of the word before.

I was sent to see a psychiatrist in my local day care hospital. I was 19 years of age in a waiting room surrounded by people much older than I was. Surely I am not the only young person suffering from depression, I thought to myself. There was a vacant look in all of their eyes, a hollowness, an emptiness, the feeling of darkness pervaded the room.

The psychiatrist explained that there might be a chemical imbalance in my brain, asked me my symptoms and prescribed a mixture of anti depressants, anxiety and sleeping pills based on what I told him. He explained that it would take time to get the right cocktail of tablets for my type of depression.

I had an uneasy feeling about the whole thing. Something deep inside in me told me this wasn’t the way forward and this wasn’t what I needed. As I walked out a group of people in another room with intellectual disabilities were doing various things. One man had a teaching device in front of him and he was trying to put a square piece into a round hole. It summed up perfectly what I felt had just happened to me.

I now stayed in my room all day, only leaving it to go to the bathroom. I locked the door and it was only opened to allow my mother bring me some food. I didn’t want to speak to anybody. The only time I left the house was on a Thursday morning to visit the psychiatrist. When everbody had left to go to work and school, my Mother would bring me my breakfast.

I cried nearly all the time. Sometimes she would sit there and cry with me, other times talk with me and hold my hand, tell me that she would do anything to help me get better, other times just sit there quietly whilst I ate the food.

Depression is difficult to explain to people. If you have experienced it there is no need, if you haven’t, I don’t think there are words adequate to describe its horror. I have had a lot of injuries playing hurling, snapped cruciates, broken bones in my hands 11 times, had my lips sliced in half and all my upper teeth blown out with a dirty pull but none of them come anywhere near the physical pain and mental torture of depression.

It permeates every part of your being, from your head to your toes. It is never ending, waves and waves of utter despair and hopelessness and fear and darkness flood throughout your whole body. You crave for peace but even sleep doesn’t afford that. It wrecks your dreams and turns your days into a living nightmare. It destroys your personality, your relationship with your family and friends, your work, your sporting life, it affects them all. Your ability to give and receive affection is gone. You tear at your skin and your hair with frustration. You cut yourself to give some form of physical expression to the incredible pain you feel.

You want to grab it and smash it, but you can’t get a hold of it. You go to sleep hoping, praying not to wake up. You rack your brain seeing is there something you done in your life that justifies this suffering. You wonder why God is not answering your pleas for relief and you wonder is he there at all or has he forgotten about you. And through it all remains the darkness. It’s as if someone placed a veil over your soul and never returned to remove it. This endless, black, never ending tunnel of darkness.

I had been five months in my room now. I had watched the summer turn into the autumn and then to Winter through my bedroom window. One of the most difficult things was watching my teammates parade through the town after winning the U21 championship through it. That was the real world out there.

In here in my room was a living hell. I was now on about 18 tablets a day and not getting better but worse. I was eating very little but the medication was ballooning my weight to nearly twenty stone. I was sent to see another psychiatrist and another doctor who suggested electric shock therapy which I flatly refused. It was obvious to me I was never going to get better. My desire for death was now much stronger than my desire for living so I made a decision.

I had been contemplating suicide for a while now and when I finally decided and planned it out, a strange thing happened. A peace that I hadn’t experienced for a long time entered my mind and body. For the first time in years, I could get a good night’s sleep. It was as if my body realized that this pain it was going through was about to end and it went into relax mode. I had the rope hidden in my room. I knew there was a game on a Saturday evening and that my father and the lads would be gone to that.

After my Mother and sister would be gone to Mass, I would drive to the location and hang myself. I didn’t feel any anxiety about it. It would solve everything, I thought. No more pain, both for me and my family. They were suffering as well as I was and I felt with me gone, it would make life easier for them. How wrong I would have been. I have seen the effects and damage suicide has on families. It is far,far greater than anything endured while living and helping a person with depression.

For some reason my Mother never went to Mass. I don’t know why but she didn’t go. It was a decision on her part that saved my life.

The following week, a family that I had worked for when I was younger heard about me being unwell. They rang my Mother and told them that they knew a clinical psychologist working in a private practice that they felt could help me.

I had built up my hopes too many times over the last number of months that a new doctor, a new tablet, a new treatment was going to help and had them dashed when he or it failed to help me. I wasn’t going through it again. My mother pleaded to give him a try and eventually I agreed. It was a decision on my part that would save my life.

After meeting Tony, I instantly knew this was what I had been searching for. It was the complete opposite of what I felt when I was being prescribed tablets and electric shock therapy. We sat opposite each other in a converted cottage at the side of his house with a fire lighting in the corner. He looked at me with his warm eyes and said ‘I hear you haven’t been too well. How are you feeling’. It wasn’t even the question, it was the way he asked it.

I looked at him for about a minute or so and I began to cry. When the tears stopped, I talked and he listened intently. Driving home with my mother that night, I cried again but it wasn’t tears of sadness, it was tears of joy. I knew that evening I was going to better. There was finally a chink of light in the darkness.

Therapy is a challenging experience. It’s not easy baring your soul. When you sit in front of another human being and discuss things you have never discussed with anyone, it can be quite scary. Paulo Coelho says in one of his books that ‘A man is at his strongest when he is willing to be vulnerable’.

Sadly, society conditions men to be the opposite and views vulnerability as a weakness. For therapy to work, a person has to be willing to be vulnerable. Within a week, I was off all medication. For me, medication was never the answer. My path back to health was one of making progress, then slipping and making progress again. It was far from straightforward.

I had to face up to memories I had buried from being bullied quite a lot when I was a young kid. Some of it occurred in primary school, others in secondary. It was raw and emotional re-visiting those times but it had to be done.

A lot of my identity was tied up with hurling and it was an un-healthy relationship. The ironic thing is that as I began to live my life more from the inside out and appreciate and value myself for being me and not needing hurling for my self esteem, I loved the game more than ever. I got myself super fit and my weight down to 13 and a half stone.

I made the Cloyne Senior team and went on to play with the Cork Senior hurling team, making a cameo appearance in the final of 2006. It is still one of the biggest joys of my life playing hurling with Cloyne, despite losing three County finals and an All-Ireland with Cork. Being involved with the Cloyne team was a huge aid in my recovery and my teammates gave me great support during that time.

I went back to serve my time as an electrician. I went to college by night and re-discovered my joy of learning. I work for a great company and have a good life now. I finished therapy in 2004. I have not had a panic attack in that time and have not missed a day’s work because of depression since then.

I came to realise that depression was not my enemy but my friend. I don’t say this lightly. I know the damage it does to people and the lives it has wrecked and is wrecking so I am only talking for myself. How can you say something that nearly killed you was your friend? The best coaches I have ever dealt with are those that tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. You mightn’t like it at the time but after or maybe years later, you know they were right.

I believe depression is a message from a part of your being to tell you something in your life isn’t right and you need to look at it. It forced me to stop and seek within for answers and that is where they are. It encouraged me to look at my inner life and free myself from the things that were preventing me from expressing my full being. The poet David Whyte says ‘the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else’s’.

This is an ongoing process. I am still far from living a fully, authentic life but I am very comfortable now in my own skin. Once or twice a year, especially when I fall into old habits, my ‘friend’ pays me a visit. I don’t push him away or ignore him. I sit with him in a chair in a quiet room and allow him to come. I sit with the feeling. Sometimes I cry, other times I smile at how accurate his message is. He might stay for an hour, he might stay for a day. He gives his message and moves on.

He reminds me to stay true to myself and keep in touch with my real self. A popular quote from the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu is ‘a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step’. A correct translation of the original Chinese though is ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet’. Lao Tzu believed that action was something that arose naturally from stillness. When you can sit and be with yourself, it is a wonderful gift and real and authentic action flows from it.

Many, many people are living lives of quiet misery. I get calls from people on the phone and to my house because people in my area will know my story. Sometimes it is for themselves, other times it is asking if I would talk to another person. I’m not a doctor or a therapist and anyone I talk to in distress, I always encourage them to go to both but people find it easier at first to talk to someone who has been in their shoes. It is incredible the amount of people it affects. Depression affects all types of people, young and old, working and not working, wealthy and poor.

For those people who are currently gripped by depression, either experiencing it or are supporting or living with someone with it, I hope my story helps. There is no situation that is without hope, there is no person that can’t overcome their present difficulties. For those that are suffering silently, there is help out there and you are definitely not alone.

Everything you need to succeed is already within you and you have all the answers to your own issues. A good therapist will facilitate that process. My mother always says ‘a man’s courage is his greatest asset’. It is an act of courage and strength, not weakness, to admit you are struggling. It is an act of courage to seek help. It is an act of courage to face up to your problems.

An old saying goes ‘there is a safety in being hidden, but a tragedy never to be found’. You are too precious and important to your family, your friends, your community, to yourself, to stay hidden. In the history of the world and for the rest of time, there will never again be another you. You are a once off, completely unique.

The real you awaits within to be found but to get there requires a journey inwards . A boat is at its safest when it is in the harbour but that’s not what it was built to do. We are the same.

Your journey in will unearth buried truths and unspoken fears. A new strength will emerge to help you to head into the choppy waters of your painful past. Eventually you will discover a place of peace within yourself, a place that encourages you to head out into the world and live your life fully. The world will no longer be a frightening place to live in for you.

The most important thing is to take the first step. Please take it.

Former Cork hurler Conor Cusack, from Cloyne, spoke to Miriam O’Callaghan last night on RTÉ One’s Prime Time. His appearance came after he wrote an article detailing his battle with depression and how he almost tried to take his own life. He posted the article, entitled ‘Depression is a friend, not my enemy‘, on his blog on Monday.

Miriam O’Callaghan: “Conor, you’re very welcome.”

Conor Cusack: “Miriam, thanks very much for having me here. It’s great to be up here. I suppose, look, I’m not here to paint a picture of myself as being an angel. I’ve a lot of friends down in Cloyne and Cork and they’ll tell you, I’m the furthest thing from being an angel that you can find. I’m not here to bash medication, or bash psychiatry. They have their place within the treatment of depression and there’s a lot of people who get a lot of benefit out of it. But I suppose I’m here to tell my story and I think it’s a story that resonates with an awful lot of people in the country. If it can be a bit of help, a bit of comfort, a bit of hope to some few people and if it can perhaps break the taboo and maybe lessen the stigma that’s attached with it? Well then I’m very glad to tell this story.”

O’Callaghan: “Let’s go back, Conor. When did you first experience depression? When did you know you were suffering from depression?”

Cusack: “Well, look, I suppose I was probably around 15 or 16 when I first started experiencing panic attacks and for anyone who’s experienced panic attacks, it’s an horrific experience. You’re convinced your world is ending, pains in your chest, can’t catch your breadth, you’re convinced you’re going to die. And that was the start of my problems, really, you know. Now, it just progressed along, bit by bit. It wasn’t something that was sudden. Gradually, I started to lose interest in my friends, started to lose interest in school that I loved, started to lose interest in hurling and the worst of all, I started to lose interest in people. I always loved people and loved being in their company but it was a gradual, bit-by-bit thing. And I suppose, I was in work one morning, in [inaudible] down in Midleton, and finally, the image that I had been keeping up along, I didn’t have the strength any more, to keep up that image. And finally I cracked. And, you know sometimes they say that something has to crack for the light to allow in, well that morning I cracked. And I lay down in the corner inside in the building, started balling my eyes out. One of my fellow workers came over, poor man didn’t know what to do, he was looking foolish with me and I said ‘look will you just take me home’. GP came and prescribed a few relaxing tablets and stuff. Went to hospital the following week, had a battery of tests done, had every test imaginable and at the end of it all, a doctor came to my bed at the end of it, and said ‘look, we think you’re suffering from depression’. It was the first time that I’d heard the word and that was the first time that I would have realised that I had something like that wrong with me.”

O’Callaghan: “And, for anyone who hasn’t read the blog, I mean you basically retreated to your bedroom, didn’t you? I mean it was so bad, you almost stayed in your bedroom a lot and hardly ever came out?”

Cusack: “Lived in my bedroom, Miriam, lived in my bedroom. For five months, the metre-by-metre window in front of me, that was my link to the outside world, you know? And there was probably 10mm of glass separating me from there but I was a million miles away from that. That was the real world out there. This was a living hell in here for me. I saw the summer pass, I saw the autumn pass, I saw the winter pass through that window. There was only one person, well two people, my mother and my aunt Marie that I’d allow in to that room, just to bring me food. And, on the Thursday morning, when I’d used to go to see the psychiatrist, that was the only time I’d leave the house. I didn’t want to speak to anyone, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. That room was my sanctuary away from the world. But, in reality, it was a living hell.”

O’Callaghan: “You came to your lowest moment, didn’t you? Tell the story about the day your mother didn’t go to mass.”

Cusack: “Well, I suppose, previous to that, I’d been to a lot of different doctors and psychiatrists and I was on 18 tablets a day at this stage, you know, and I wasn’t getting better. I was sent to another psychiatrist in a place in Cork City, it’s called St. Anne’s and St. Anne’s would probably have, it would be a place that would be associated with a lot of people with mental difficulties. And I went in to see the doctor and the first thing he said to me was ‘oh, your brother is the famous Cork goalkeeper’. And he proceeded to talk for the next ten minutes about hurling. I had zero interest in hurling at that time and my esteem and whatever was on the floor at that stage and here was this guy and he talking to me about hurling and not talking to me about me. And at the end of it all, he suggested this electric shock therapy to me. And intrinsically I don’t know why but something inside of me always told me that medication and something like that was not the path that I needed to follow. And I remember coming out of the hospital and I was utterly distraught. Because this was like my final hope, that I thought that this was the guy that was going to finally help me. And, instead, he was suggesting something that was alien to me. And I…”

O’Callaghan: “Though it could work for other people..”

Cusack: “It could work, exactly, yeah, absolutely..”

O’Callaghan: “But keep going.”

Cusack: “Absolutely, as I say, this is my story, you know, and everyone has their own. But..So I came home and I remember I was utterly distraught and, you know, I decided one night I couldn’t…the desire for death outweighed my desire for living. And I decided I was going to kill myself. And an incredible thing happened. A peace that I hadn’t experienced in years came over my body. It was like as if my body realised no longer is it going to have to suffer this horrific physical and mental pain that I had been going through for the last number of years, no longer was I going to have to suffer these panic attacks, waking up, soaked in sweat every night. And I got a night’s sleep that I hadn’t had in years. And I was very calm about it. There was no anxiety. I knew my dad and my brothers, Victor and Dónal Óg, would be going to a match that Saturday evening and I knew my mam and my sister would be going to mass. And so I had the rope in my room, I was quite calm about it, very matter of fact, I was going to get into my car, drive to my location that I had arranged and hang myself. And for some reason, I don’t know why, but my mother never went to mass. And, ultimately, it was the decision on her part that saved my life.”

O’Callaghan: “It’s amazing, actually.”

Cusack: “Yeah.”

O’Callaghan: “But after that, you transformed yourself. You got better. Your story is a happy story at the end, Conor. Explain that path to recovery for you. How that came about?”

Cusack: “Well, look, I worked for Darina Allen since I was eight years of age, I worked there for eight or nine years in her gardens and in her kitchen and, you know, Darina is an incredible woman, she never forgets anybody who’s ever worked for her. Still to this day she’ll send in if there’s something happened to the family, a death or something, a table full of food would come into the house. And my aunt Marie has worked with Darina for years. And Darina asked one day ‘How’s Conor doing? Is he in school or what is he doing?’ And my aunt told her, you know, that I was in a bad way. So Darina suggested a person that she knew, that she felt could have been of benefit to me. And, now I’d been to loads of, loads of doctors at this stage. I’d given up all hope. But my mother pleaded with me, just to go one more time. And, that was the decision on my part, that ultimately saved my life. I went to see this clinical psychologist and from the moment I met him, I don’t know what it was but from the moment I met him I knew ‘This was it. I’m going to get better with this person. He is the man that I’ve been seeking all along’. And it was an incredible thing. I remember coming home with my mother, driving home, with my mother in the car that evening, and I was crying but it was tears of joy, it was absolute tears of joy because I knew this was the thing that I’d been waiting for all along. And it was an incredible moment in my life. And it was the moment that transformed the whole lot for me, you know?”

O’Callaghan: “And you’re well now. And I know the reason, you said to me earlier, you wrote the blog and what you want mostly to say tonight is to give hope to other people, don’t you Conor?”

Cusack: “Absolutely, Miriam. Look there’s people at the moment out there that are going through depression or anxiety and they’re getting treatment and I just want to say to them, I want to encourage them to stay on the path. It’s not an easy, it’s not an easy journey, it’s very difficult and I salute their courage for doing that. And the rewards at the end of it are great. There’s another group of people out there that are living with and helping, supporting friends and loved-ones that are ill with depression or anxiety, or whatever, I know the powerlessness that they feel, looking at their loved-ones and that it’s not like a cut in your leg that you can fix or anything. It’s a difficult place for them. But the person themselves might not say it but, inside in them, they very much appreciate your support and your comfort. I remember mother saying to me one time: ‘I will patiently wait til eternity and beyond for my son to get better’, so keep giving your love and support.

To those people out there that are living a life of silent misery, and are afraid to take that step, you’re not alone, there’s a load of people in your same situation. You know, there’s a certain comfort and safety in remaining hidden but it’s a terrible tragedy if you can’t be found. And, you know, there’s an incredible amount of help and support out there for those people. It’s an act of courage and strength, not weakness, to admit that you’re struggling. It’s an act of courage to say that I need help but you need to take the first step, you need to take the first step, and I plead with those people to please take that first step. And, finally, to those people out there tonight, Miriam, that are perhaps contemplating suicide. I know the terrible torture and pain that you’re going through, I know the horrific thing that your day-to-day living and existence is, I know that you think that this world and your family and friends and community will be a better place without you in it.But I guarantee you it won’t, it’s not. The destruction and the pain that’s left in families with someone that’s committed suicide is incredible and the distress they’re going through now is nothing compared to what it would be, without you in the world. As human beings, you know, we’re a once-off phenomenon in this universe. Of all the billions of people that have ever lived or all the billions of people that are going to come after us, there’ll never again be another Miriam O’Callaghan, there’ll never again be another Conor Cusack. We’re totally unique and the world needs us, the world needs all the people that we have in our communities. So, you know, I promise those people that are in that terrible place, there’s a place within them, it’s a place of peace, it’s a place of joy, it’s a place of love, it’s a place of hope and it’s waiting for them to rediscover it. It’s waiting for them to rediscover it. And it’s within their grasp, it’s within their grasp. They’ve all the skills and all the abilities to be able to get there. And the thing about it Miriam is these people, they’ll emerge stronger people. They’ll emerge people that are living their life from the inside out, independent of other people’s opinions, they’re living their life fully and freely. They’re gonna not be frightened of this world any more, they’re going to be embraced by it. They’re going to look at challenges and difficulties and take them all on. And somewhere along the way, I’ll get to meet those souls, souls on the road less travelled, and I’ll look forward to that. Embrace the journey, start the journey.”